Introduction

Data-based Storytelling

Daniel Winkler

Institute for Retailing & Data Science

Nils Wlömert

Preliminaries

Welcome to Data-based Storytelling!

 

Lectures

Date Time Room Topics Slides Readings
01-09-2023 1:00pm - 6:00pm LC.2.064 Introduction Introduction Lost in Data Translation, R for Data Science
01-11-2023 1:00pm - 6:00pm LC.1.038 Modelling Data Science and the Art of Persuasion
01-16-2023 1:00pm - 6:00pm LC.2.064 Visualization/Datascience in R The Psychology behind Data Visualization Techniques
01-18-2023 1:00pm - 6:00pm LC.2.064 Review Causal Pitchfork Visualization A Crash Course in Good and Bad Controls
01-20-2023 1:00pm - 3:30pm LC.2.064 createations / Exam

Goals

Gain the ability to create & communicate valuable insight from data

  1. Develop a Data Science Toolbox
    • Knowledge on data analysis and createation
    • R programming skills to help implementation
  2. Gain confidence in our analysis
    • Learn (currently) common techniques
    • Cultivate a mindset for developing skills
    • Learn about common pitfalls
  3. Work hard and have a good time
    • Be open to question everything
    • Study to understand not to repeat
    • Master marketable skills for your career

[…] associate “winning” with the effort process itself. That’s the holy grail of dopamine management for success. It won’t make you dull or unhappy; it will make everything easier and more pleasurable […].

Andrew Huberman

Lost in data Translation

Lost in data Translation

Industry

Hire as many data scientists as you can find you’ll still be lost without translators to connect analytics with real business value. […] By 2025 Chief Data Officers and their teams function as a business unit with profit-and-loss responsibilities. The unit, in partnership with business teams, is responsible for ideating new ways to use data, developing a holistic enterprise data strategy (and embedding it as part of a business strategy), and incubating new sources of revenue by monetizing data services and data sharing.

McKinsey and Company

Academia

The empirics-first approach is not antagonistic to theory but rather can serve as a stepping-stone to theory. The approach lends itself well to today’s data-rich environment, which can reveal novel research questions untethered to theory. […] we argue that [empirics first] has a natural arc that bends more easily back to real-world implications.

Golder et al. (2022)

Shifting the paradigm

 

How old is this person?

Shifting the paradigm

Thinking in school

g world world thinking thinking thinking->world about

Shifting the paradigm

Thinking in school

g world world thinking thinking thinking->world about create create thinking->create presentation presentation create->presentation

Shifting the paradigm

Thinking in school

g world world thinking thinking thinking->world about create create thinking->create presentation presentation create->presentation audience audience audience->presentation

Shifting the paradigm

Thinking in school

g world world thinking thinking thinking->world about create create thinking->create presentation presentation create->presentation presentation->create audience audience audience->presentation

Shifting the paradigm

Thinking in school

g world world thinking thinking thinking->world about create create thinking->create presentation presentation create->presentation presentation->create audience audience audience->presentation

Thinking in life

g world world presentation presentation presentation->world create and think create and think create and think->world about create and think->presentation audience audience audience->presentation

Shifting the paradigm

Thinking in school

g world world thinking thinking thinking->world about create create thinking->create presentation presentation create->presentation presentation->create audience audience audience->presentation

Thinking in life

g world world presentation presentation presentation->world VALUE create and think create and think create and think->world about create and think->presentation audience audience audience->presentation

“Who does what better now?”

Creating Value with Data

Creating Value with Data

Golder et al. (2022)

Creating Value with Data

  1. Identify Opportunity
  • Theory is in short supply
  • Observations do not align with theory
  • Literature is equivocal
  • Intuition leads to multiple plausible and conflicting outcomes
  • Newly emergent data allows scantly-/un-examined relationships to be probed
  • Find consequential DVs and actionable IVs
  1. Explore Terrain
  • Start with open ended research question
  • Scope re-definition based on empirical findings
  • Risk: “scope creep”
  • Valuable: Limited analyses that lead to follow-up studies
  • Not valuable: Limited analyses that cannot be replicated
  • Listen to the data
  • Generate robust and meaningful findings
  1. Advance Understanding

Failed robustness checks should be viewed as learning opportunities that lead to an even broader exploration that considers why a finding obtains in one context but not another

Golder et al. (2022)

Listen to the Data

  • Reliability and credibility of sources
  • Visualization
    • e.g., Berman and Israeli (2022) study the adoption of retail analytics dashboards and “find an increase of 4%–10% in average weekly revenues postadoption”

Listen to the Data

  • Robust findings

OLS 1
(Intercept) 5.565***
x -0.308***
+ p < 0.1, * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001

Listen to the Data

  • Robust findings

OLS 2
(Intercept) 4.315***
x 0.334***
g B -4.403***
+ p < 0.1, * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001

References

Data-based Storytelling

Berman, Ron, and Ayelet Israeli. 2022. “The Value of Descriptive Analytics: Evidence from Online Retailers.” Marketing Science 41 (6): 1074–96. https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2022.1352.
Golder, Peter N., Marnik G. Dekimpe, Jake T. An, Harald J. van Heerde, Darren S. U. Kim, and Joseph W. Alba. 2022. “Learning from Data: An Empirics-First Approach to Relevant Knowledge Generation.” Journal of Marketing, September, 00222429221129200. https://doi.org/10.1177/00222429221129200.